Thursday, November 29, 2007

We're leaving early tomorrow for Santa Fe. There's a big storm passing through the Southwest so a share of worries about the drive. Won't be posting much till Monday, when we're back in Northridge.

When we went to Ridgway today for the dump run, we took a hike along the river and saw 5 bald eagles, sitting and flying about. It was thrilling. My camera died a permanent death as I tried to take pictures. It's frozen going in and out, off and on, so no pictures of the eagles.

(and no pictures of Santa Fe. I have my eye on a Sony camera with better closeup abilities when we get back.)

Something's been going on with my computer the last week or two, possibly a virus, mainly just in Flash, but then I remembered about restoration points. In Windows, and probably Mac too, you can revert to an earlier time with your computer which seemed to solve all the goofiness Flash was testing me with.

Let me know if you're not seeing the current day of the week. This was based on a tea towel set I saw on the Internet. Better than a day of the week panties set, right?

Here's all the code you need for this, if the movie clip has an instance name of chick, and there are seven images in the movie clip. (Flash starts counting the day of the week from 0, so you have to add one on.)

Monday, November 26, 2007

Actually I saw this print on a walk today, where there were no prints until we came through. On the right is Molly, who has a BIG footprint for a dog, and on the left a print that was like a small human, but you could see toenails at the front edge of each step, and a lot of drag behind. What else could it be? Print on left was melted from yesterday but in glistening sun the nails were apparent.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

We're heading back to California next weekend with a stop in Santa Fe for the Film Festival there. Jon's movie Searchers 2.0 is playing there, and Jon's supposed to do q&as after the screening. Our clothes have gotten pretty ratty over the last two months, and he thought maybe he could get a nice sweater at J.C. Penney's when we were in Montrose for groceries.

The store is brand new and we hadn't been in it before. I'd heard that Penney's has more stylish clothes than in the old days. Where did I hear that?

There was an old fashioned red ambulance parked out front of the store, and a Salvation Army woman ringing her bell. I thought maybe the ambulance was some sort of Santa thing, maybe Santa comes in an ambulance at J.C. Penney's.

We entered the store and were greeted by a very wide young man who urged us to go to the left, around the sparkly cosmetic aisle. That was because a thin Scandanavian man with a beard was lying on the floor surrounded by emergency technicians. His eyes were closed and he was moaning and something was dripping from his mouth. I don't stare at things like this, but one quick glance over and I took it all in. Families were standing around watching the scene.

The store made me think of my own line from "Quasi at the Quackadero": "There certainly are a lot of weirdos out today." This was a whole different crowd from the Target shoppers seen next door, even from the Walmart shoppers across the street.

An obese woman with a ring in her lip walked with her scrawny country grandma, feeling merchandise. "Isn't this cute?" "It sure is." Again, where's my camera hat? Her pants drooped down in back so you could see more than you wanted.

I saw a guy folding pants, with a tag around his neck, so it was likely he worked there, but not a sure thing. I asked him if they sold digital camera memory cards.

When he turned to look at me, I swear he looked just like the guy in the picture above, from a 1977 J.C.Penney's catalog that's circulating the internet. (thanks Sally G) except the top of his hair was dyed light puke green.

I wondered if he'd stopped to help the guy on the floor.

He was totally unsophisticated looking, a farm boy, with this puke green hair on top. He told me where the digital memory cards were sold, and I wandered along and found out they don't sell them.

The clothes were so ugly in the store that they were almost appealing. I saw this cowboy type wandering around and thought maybe I'd follow him to the more interesting men's clothes. He was wearing a cowboy hat that seemed to fit him, but not boots, running shoes, and later I noticed he was carrying a woman's shoulder bag and was quite alone.

It seems men don't even wear nice sweaters in Montrose. They don't sell them. Everything is sweatshirts tshirts and hoodies. This one tshirt of a Mexican wrestler with tattoo swirls and sticky plastic trim really had me touching and feeling. eek. I spent some time reading the t shirt messages which weren't so clever. "Here I am Now what were your other two wishes?" "every day is game day."

As we were leaving the store, the man on the floor was gone, and someone was pushing a modernistic mop machine which looked a lot like the Hoover shoes and might be fun to drive, if you weren't cleaning up who knows what.

The ambulance was gone, Santa hadn't showed, and there was a new Salvation Army bell ringer on duty.

disclaimer: not meant to mock the people of Montrose- the whole world is observing casual 24-7, but this was one ugly store.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

With the snow storm over, we headed to Montrose right after breakfast so we'd have food next week. Right before we headed out I ran back to the house to get my camera- never know what you'll see...

The driving was very icy and scary. Everyone was driving slowly. I got my camera out to get a shot of the grand view of mountains covered with snow at Dallas Divide. (land belongs to Ralph Lauren, or used to.) Click, then discovered the memory card was back at the house. Oh well, just a postcard shot anyway. Around the curve and EIGHT large turkeys fly just over our car and climb the hill on the other side. I've been looking for turkeys since we got here!

Then by the river in Ridgway, we saw the site we've joked about as being impossible, becausee a friend had said she always sees them on the road to Montrose, by the river. (yeah, right, we thought.) The trees were filled with EAGLES, both golden eagles and bald eagles. There must have been twenty in a two mile stretch!

I tried to get a memory card in Montrose at the various stores where we shopped, but they were too expensive, and my camera doesn't do far away closeups anyway.

That map at the bottom of my blog seems to have drifted axis. No longer is my unknown friend from Tasmania on display, and now it says I'm in Rogers, Minnesota. I hope not!

Thursday, November 22, 2007

I remembered one of the first pumpkin pies I ever made, long ago in Portland, Oregon. I left it on the counter. When I came back in the kitchen, my little kitten was standing in it.

I've had equal success with the pies I made today.

Pie crust number one-- don't know what I did wrong but it just crumbled into a zillion pieces and I threw it away.

Pie number two-- pumpkin pie. I know I included the sugar, and everything looks okay with this one, but Jon told them I'd bring two pies, so

Pie number three-- blueberry pie. Last summer I learned a way to make this pie with maple syrup and fresh blueberries from the James Beard cookbook. The crusts rolled out really nicely. I only had frozen blueberries, and didn't realize that meant hot black smoke would roll out of the oven as the blueberries turned into wet stew and dripped into the fire. Although it looks nice on the surface, I know when you cut into it it will be a wet drippy mess. So on to:

Pie number four-- butterscotch meringue. Never tried this one before. Had to bake the crust first, and it came out with mighty craters, but they were covered up with the beige pudding-- somehow butterscotch has a much prettier color when it comes from a mix. But I heaped the meringue on it, and it looks... okay... and the spoon licking was good. If there had to be another--

Pie number five-- I'd have to make it out of beef broth and clams, because that's about all that's left in the cupboard!

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

When I look at this old postcard, I can't help but imagine the artist had run out of ideas. I mean, what is this about? We didn't see any wild turkeys on our walk today, dressed up or otherwise. It is cold here and dark skies.

We're going to a house down the road for Thanksgiving. I'm baking two pies: pumpkin and blueberry. That's all I have to do. Their last name sounds just like Sugar and the wife's first name is Candy.

Wherever you're spending it, hope the meal is good, the conversation is lively, (but not insulting), and you get to go home when you want to go home. (or the guests go home when you'd like them to.)

If you're cooking, hope you don't drop the cooked turkey on the kitchen floor, as my mother once did, or forget to put sugar in the pumpkin pie, as I did last year.

If I were paranoid I'd be convinced that my foaming at the mouth pitbull former web design client had sabotaged my Eudora email. But I think it's coincidence. Eudora's pretty boring, anyway. So I've downloaded Thunderbird, and my first email is from Sally G- hi!

My first email program (client) was Magic Cap, and I found a screenshot of it, weirdly set to my birthday:

I loved this program. You clicked on each item to work on that. It looked better on the computer. There's a history of the program with more screenshots here.

It5 had different rooms you could travel to, and everything was clickable and more or less functional.

I barely knew how to use my computer when I bought this software. I didn't know each email came with an annoying song and advertisement, but the bigger problem was that the email had some basic big problems and ultimately didn't work, and customer support was saying, "sorry."

While looking for Magic Cap images, I found this silly image from a wonderful blog that deals with Popular Mechanix magazine. Now here's another blog where I can absolutely lose myself.I always regretted not collecting Popular Mechanix.

Friday, November 16, 2007

We went to Telluride last night to catch the late afternoon show of "Into the Wild", ate barbecue at Fat Alley's and listened in to other people's conversations. Then we ambled over to the movie theatre, realized the running time was more than two hours and knew we'd hate the movie, having read the book and the reviews. So we came home and ran "The Waitress". It's a clunky, goofy movie, but I thought the concept of theme pies was incredibly poetic and sensual.

Our free dvd from Fox got all snaggy right near the end, so we never quite caught the ending, but enough to know where it was all going.

The two books I hate:

A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement (Dance to the Music of Time) (Actually 3 novels in one by Anthony Powell) Set in the 20's, unoriginal writing with phrases piled on top of phrases, and pompous classical references, what's this writer got going, compared to so many women writers from the same period. Yet he's recommended so highly. Halfway through the second novel, I'm tossing it.

Essential ActionScript 3.0 (Essential) This horrid 900 page code book saddens me. I love Flash. I love coding for Flash. They've thrown out the old language, (though old timers are allowed to still use it), and have put in this new strict code language which is very hard to comprehend and so far I've seen no use for it that's fun or entertaining. It really has been written to be used for computer programmers only. I know that there are new features in the latest version of Flash which would probably lend themselves to interesting experiments, but I doubt I'll be able to explore them. If I were in jail maybe I could get through this, but no plans of that at present.

And I don't like Hillary Clinton either, so there! But that line about asbestos pants does make one's imagination run on.

The photo is of the cute new shirt I got from Rod's, and a water color I haven't finished.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

I dread picking up my mother's patterns of sleeping. Since we've been in Colorado I've rarely slept well. You should see the stars. I think it's related to Dinah and the separation required.

If I wake up too bolt alert, (especially after doing code experiments), I try old style go to sleep methods, like counting sheep etc. Thus the picture, from a Sesame St. song.

Sometimes I trudge into weird dream territory, like imagining sloppy frozen desserts trade named "DreamWeaver Ice Cream", with tiny figures from the past waving to me frantically as the Big Spoon stirs them around. Am I responsible for them?

And suddenly it's 4:50 am and surely a good time to get started with things!

When am I getting that camera hat? I tried to get a full view shot of this poor shopper at City Market today, but he kept looking at me so I had to pretend the camera was a cel phone, a behavior that used to drive Dinah particularly nuts, because it is a bit nutty. "Oh, hi. What are you doing? Waiting to take a picture?"

His cart was full of nothing but Stouffers frozen foods, many, many many red boxes, and his pyramid silhouette looked as if he'd swallowed the meals trays and all. Talk about lonely fat guy menus, poor fellow. But I guess he likes the way they taste. He was definitely in the 300 pounder club. Only Stouffers in the cart.

Then we went to the post office to mail a goody box to Dinah: warm clothes, dark chocolate, jelly beans, trail mix, bagels, lip gloss, postits, Cheesits. I also had a 3 pack of my dvds that some nice person had purchased this week. I thought I did the smart thing by going up to the kiosk to mail my packages since the post Veteran's Day line was so long. But as I rolled through the automated menu, I knew I had to cover every trace of id that showed my box had once held a case of wine. Otherwise I'd go on the do not call list or the do not fly list or something inappropriate. (It's illegal to use those boxes.)

I decorated that box with so many Priority Mail stickers there was a pile of waxy peel backs left when I was done. I got my postage, put the box in the drop down box feeder along with the dvds which I'd forgotten to stamp..(only remembered that part later.)

While Jon stood with Molly outside the p.o., a woman came up to him and said, "What a nice dog. I have a dog at home, a black Lab." "That's wonderful," Jon said.

"Yes," she told him, "my husband always wanted a black Lab and I found a place on the Internet where you can get them, stuffed." (as in TAXIDERMY!)

She went on: "He didn't seem all that amused by it."

She looked like a totally modern grandmother normal.

I have another story about a similar scary modern grandmother normal, but it's so creepy I will wait till another day.

Since we've been here Molly has made three friends: Cameron the Malamute, an old Husky who comes up in the morning and pees in her face, and this voyeur Lab who comes over after dark and looks in the window.

Jon has made two friends: the new president of the homeowners and the guy at the Ridgway dump.

Me? Only digital friends. Hope this isn't the trend for the rest of my life! What a crank I am.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

I figured out how to make an animated header in Blogger.I put it on a separate Blogger page, here.

I didn't like those big Amazon slideshows on my main page anyway, but I spent a lot of time reading those books and writing minireviews, so I decided to do a funonmarslikes blog. May or may not keep updating it, but I was pleasantly surprised that I could get the animation into the header, as it wasn't easy.

Also Whinsey has some new animation over at her blog.Time for a hike. The woman taking care of our animals at home called to say one of the exotic Australian doves had flown away. .. We've had a pair for ten years. Maybe it will return-- white doves do, but these doves have stranger personalities.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Linda found this great site for creating favicons, the teenser pictures that appear in your address bar. I'd made one a long time ago, but since the image is only 16 x 16, it's hard to get just what you want. It's also important, if you don't use a site like favicon.cc, that you make sure the file type is .ico.

Anyway, once you've made your favicon and named it favicon.ico-- which the site does for you, upload it to your own site. I'm going to upload the one I just made right now. I have a different one for Whinsey.

Then, in blogger do this: (thanks to blogu) (I couldn't get the code into blogger, so had to use a jpg-- if you go to my link previous you can copy and paste it directly.)

To get the favicon on your blogger, you need a code to add to your template, and this is it:

Replace "http://myfavicon.com/favicon.ico" with the URL of where your webspace stored your ico file, & paste the code between the head tags of your blog. The favicon will now appear in most browsers address bar and bookmarks. (Not sure about the rhyme or reasoning here, but some do...some don't.) Added bonus! If you use Mozilla Firefox (why wouldn'tUpdate: Favicons only appear in IE if the site is in your bookmarks. If the site is not bookmarked, I have discovered a little trick. Left click on the 'e' in the address bar and jiggle it a few times. The favicon will show up!

To get to that part of your blog click on customize>template>edit html

The closing head tag will be near the bottom of all the text. If you aren't sure what you are doing, first choose the option at the top of the page to save your current template.

Friday, November 09, 2007

I saved the xml file for my old blog layout in case this is a disaster, but any time you change your template all the widgets are lost. I'll see how many I can get back. Looks as if my categories may have gotten lost too. Bummer. This will look kind of weird for awhile but hopefully it will get adjusted so things fit.

I learned most of what I needed from elque. I hope the puzzle pieces hold together and the arms don't end up under the feet, etc. If you get a weird view on your computer, let me know.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

The weather was so nice I suggested we take our favorite hike along the canals at Woods Lake.

We picked up a sandwich at Mary's in Placerville which we split, checked that there was no mail, sent off two dvds-- one to MALVO SWEDEN, Kurt Wallendar country, the headed down the very empty road to Sawpit, found our turn.

Along the seven mile drive to the lake we saw:

A BEAR!!!

We've been coming here for more than 25 years! In that time I've seen one bear and Jon's seen one bear. But to see one together... Later he kept saying,"it seems like a fantasy."

It was about to cross the road, from out of the shadows with the stream behind him, then changed its mind and went back towards the creek.

We were beside ourselves from then on. I've been bear obsessive for many years. A BEAR! THAT WAS A BEAR! DID YOU SEE THAT? IT WAS A BEAR!

calm down.

We went on our usual hike, had lunch at the trail spot we prefer-- never saw another person though it was L.A. weather... then decided because all was so perfect we'd take the longer walk around the lake hike, the one we'd only taken once twenty years ago and couldn't remember why we never took it again...

currently in code fog, breaking the blogger rectangle design. Hope to post new view soon. But first a hike around Woods Lake-- the weather here is outstanding and peculiarly warm. Thanks for all your kind comments on my fine business sense.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

This isn't news, but I was deeply depressed today after my sheep herding trainer told me she didn't want to use the flash site I'd designed for her, which was quite fancy and light, and would prefer to put up her semi hysterical old html site which was in such disrepair that she practically begged me to help her out when I took it on.

She told me the site I designed, all in Flash, wouldn't play on her Blackberry and it wasn't serious enough, etc. I made a crap Dreamweaver single page for her today, and posted it, because I felt sorry for her as she struggles to put her old html site back together, but probably will never take a lesson from her again.

(By the way, if you're ever looking for long ago web sites, an amazing site is the waybackmachine.They never seem to have everything from your long ago site, but they have a lot.)

When you charge low prices you get the lowly worm treatment. At age 58 you'd think I would have learned this, but no. At least I didn't do it on spec...

The work I did I should have charged $1500 for. I quoted $500. insane. I accepted $250.

Then there's the String Devils, a site I thought looked really cool, oh never mind, it will just keep me awake again tonight. Innovative web design is no career unless you really absorb and love the metallic look where everything looks like toasters.

I've never had business sense, even though I'm generally sensible. I always feel sorry for the people paying me- eek- enough.

Dinah posted this picture of Nicole the Goat at college. Looks as if she's lost a few pounds. Today we saw our first pictures of U.C. Davis. There was not a person in any photo, just goats, horses, and views of the dorm room. But I loved seeing them.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Fearless friends of the Forest... I went back to find the tail I'd left hanging from a tree. (see previous post). Molly spotted the cutoff to the hill, and Jon decided to sit on a rock while I scrambled up a mountain side looking for it, then stumbled back down, disappointed, only to find it almost where he was sitting on the rock, still hanging in the tree. I stuffed it in my pack.

What kind of tail is this? (Looks like a furry turkey neck!) It's at least 20" long with bones still inside, circumference same for entire length, fur mottled as in this sample picture, lighter on underside. (I need a better camera, or steadier hands.)

Aside from the bones within the tail, there were no bones anywhere around the fur or tail scattered on pine needles. I think it might be a baby mountain lion, maybe brought down by a pack of coyotes? But the fur was relatively long, and as I said before, very soft.

I hung it from a high branch outside the kitchen window, knowing Molly would be obsessed with it if it were inside the house.

And what's a picture of a piece of tail without a picture of bear poop? I have no idea why this photo is so strange, but I was mighty nervous while taking it.

and finally, friends, an exploding puffball mushroom, gigantic, about the size of an ostrich egg:

Got up at first light to start dinner in the red crock pot. I found an appealing recipe here for crock pot lamb shanks. I've never cooked them before. So confident of success was I that I took a picture of the ingredients before I even started cooking.

I turned on the pot to low, and admired the multiple ingredients through the glass. Looked a few hours later and was surprised that there seemed to be no change in them at all...

It wasn't plugged in. (Hello, Linda?)

So today we're trying for the dinner again, and I've checked several times to make sure it's still plugged in.

Late yesterday we went for a shorter hike, exploring a steep mountainside. We found fresh bear p@@p on the edge of a cave hole we were peeking in. I admit it. I got scared. Then a little farther we found a large amount of beautiful fur with no bones at all. It was multi-colored and very soft. Then we found a long tail. I brought some of the fur back, but not the tail, which I hung in a tree. But today I think I'm going back to get that tail, because I can't figure what it could be. A mountain lion kitten is the closest I can come.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

First of all, you need to know that you can add as many blogs to your account as you wish, and delete them with a quick push of the button as well. You can even set them so no one can see them but you. You just need to come up with a unique enough name that's still available, and even that doesn't seem to be difficult.

Here's a site that has an excellent tutorial on customizing templates, and what the template code means. Don't be put off by all the ads on each page. It's very clear and thoughtful writing, and in addition the templates are very customizable and free. It has links to tutorials on more css stuff, like adding images behind text or on top. His writing isn't arrogant, which is unusual for code specialists.

If you grab a template and attempt to upload it to your test site, and get an error message, I learned a work around that solved my problem. (Although you folks on Mac, can't help you if it doesn't work.) I use Firefox. If you clear the cache (Tools> Clear Private Data> Cache) then try to upload again, it will probably work. If that fails, use Internet Explorer to upload.

The template code is much simpler than it appears at first, once you see the breakdown. It's just a bunch of css really, and is easy to switch out values. But in the tutorial he makes it clear where to be careful in switching things. (On sizing of the whole blog.)

Anyway, I have my sample blog set- waiting to hear from S. before posting it- but it looks quite nice with three columns so not the usual wasted space.

Blogu has many nice add-ons and info too, but what I'm referring you to above goes to the heart of Blogger design.

Alas, Molly's boyfriend belongs to a workman whose work down the road may be about done. We named him Cameron, after Dinah's boyfriend, since we didn't know his name. They spent hours rolling around in the grass. He's a gorgeous boy.

I loved the movie "Splendor in the Grass" when I was a teenager-- just seemed so hot and tragic and moving. Later in life I met Warren Beatty-- Jon was working with him-- he sent me roses on my 40th birthday-- somewhere I have the little card-- always wondered if Jon set him up to send them, but it was a thrill. Later that day we went to the racetrack. (not with Warren!)

I finished Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping." Beautiful writing about an incredibly chilly dysfunctional and distant small family. I far prefer what I'm reading now, "Life by Land and Sea" by Prentice Mulford, an autobiography weaving around San Francisco in 1800's. Great writing with a light touch but not too comical. Before that reread Death Valley in '49 by William Lewis Manly, which is wonderful, and I notice through google you can download it for free from project gutenberg.

I'm not an autobiography fiend. Both of these books are well written and fascinating, if you are interested in the period.

Friday, November 02, 2007

We've been seeing almost no wildlife on our long walks, but today near the bottom of the hill, Molly found this yellow plush duck missing an arm. (I'd seen a retriever carrying it on the road last week.)

Indian Summer here. I'm playing with blogger code, which makes me a little nervous. Had something worked out perfectly, then made an unknown change that threw it all out of shape again.